{"id":1405,"date":"2020-04-09T12:55:35","date_gmt":"2020-04-09T21:55:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/opinion.alaskapolicy.net\/pardonme\/?p=1405"},"modified":"2020-04-09T12:55:35","modified_gmt":"2020-04-09T21:55:35","slug":"homo-echhhh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/opinion.alaskapolicy.net\/pardonme\/homo-echhhh\/","title":{"rendered":"Homo Echhhh"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had started to do a piece about where Homo economicus was hanging in 2019. This was in no small part because of the suggestion that I came across that les Mises-erables had now gone full cannibal on Homo economicus <\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span>.\u00a0 This was hysterical as here we had those who started out by assuming that humans acted rationally, now arguing that the very model of human rationality was a straw man.<\/p>\n

But what had statted me down the path was a rather ridiculous piece by Paul Collier <\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> in which he made largely the same claims as McMakken, from arguably “the other side”. Collier largely relies on Blueprint: The evolutionary origins of a good society<\/em> by Nicholas Christakis <\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span>, an intriguing anecdotal book that is, however, far less effective in arguing human eusociality than anything on offer from E. O. Wilson. <\/span>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\n

So, let everyone (other than admitted “orthodox” economists) agree that humans are NOT rational. They are, contra Solnit <\/span>5<\/sup><\/a><\/span>, not universally altruistic. They vacillate between reliance on their forebrains and their inner chimp <\/span>6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> And those whose seem to have issues with their cognitive inhibitor circuits tend to be fruitcakes who are also outbreeding those that appear rational.<\/p>\n

And now. we have come to the great spasm on the crest of COVID-19, brought to our species courtesy of SARS Co-V-2. While many of us are seeing the “better angels of our nature”<\/span>7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> (Pinker really should stick to linguistics) as Solnit argued, one would be blind and deaf not to be aware of the greedy, careless of Phillipa Foote <\/span>8<\/sup><\/a><\/span>, massing like the real zombie apocalypse. And I have to suggest at this point that the claim of rationality, today, most likelt is an admission that the claimant suffers from Dunning- Kruger <\/span>9<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\n

I am not sanguine about our future.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had started to do a piece about where Homo economicus was hanging in 2019. This was in no small part because of the suggestion that I came across that les Mises-erables had now gone full cannibal on Homo economicus .\u00a0 This was hysterical as here we had those who started out by assuming that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":714,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,13,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-marc-grober","category-social-welfare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opinion.alaskapolicy.net\/pardonme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/opinion.alaskapolicy.net\/pardonme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/opinion.alaskapolicy.net\/pardonme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opinion.alaskapolicy.net\/pardonme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/714"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opinion.alaskapolicy.net\/pardonme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1405"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/opinion.alaskapolicy.net\/pardonme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1430,"href":"https:\/\/opinion.alaskapolicy.net\/pardonme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1405\/revisions\/1430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opinion.alaskapolicy.net\/pardonme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opinion.alaskapolicy.net\/pardonme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opinion.alaskapolicy.net\/pardonme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}